We're back!

30+ hours of travel later .. and we're back at my parents' house in Portland. Lemme tell you: airplane travel beats the socks off of bumpy Nepali bus travel.. although it was pretty hard to convince the flight crew to let us ride on the roof.

Exit Maneuvers

Wow. I'm sitting here in Bangkok on our last night in Asia. In twelve hours we'll be boarding our planes to return home from this whirlwind six-month adventure. The time certainly feels like it has passed quickly since last November, and neither of us are quite ready to step foot back on home turf yet. While I feel like we've accomplished a quite a few pretty cool things over here, I can't seem to get rid of the questions: did we do enough? could we have done more? have our trajectories and efforts even been relevant to our own actual needs and the needs of the world-at-large? is there anywhere in the states that makes thirty-cent sticky rice with mango that's as yummy as in Thailand, or fifty-cent veg curry that's as mouth-watering as in Nepal or India?

We were fortunate to be granted with heaps of praise during our last week in Kathmandu as we were treated to a jam-packed schedule of dinners, events, and good-byes with the friends and colleagues we've worked and played with in Nepal:

- I had a very productive meeting with Sanu early in the week regarding a CAD model I whipped up for a new briquette-press idea we had earlier in April. . . which uses a car-jack to apply force. Once I get him drawings, he'll have a proto made at a fabrication shop we visited a few weeks ago. If the proto works as we hope it will, it could drastically boost productivity vs. the screw press. We also discussed a pending grant with a US-based foundation, which if played right could place a huge solar cooker at Papa's house.

- We rolled up to Papa's House(s) in Dhapasi two nights in a row to talk with Michael about Dumrikharka and the future of the project we began there and say 'bye' to all the kids, staff, and volunteers. Michael, Peter, and a few of their associates have been excited about the report I wrote up on Dumrikharka, and want to both take that project to the next level and replicate the project at other NOH-funded sites. I've agreed to continue volunteering with the organization stateside to help grow this project into something really cool...

- We spent one evening at Martyr's Memorial Hospital, where Ashley's been volunteering/observing, to watch a leg amputation (a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I absolutely couldn't refuse!). I thought we'd be watching from a distance, but the surgeon handed us his camcorder and had us film the whole thing just a few feet from the bed. It was pretty cool to see the whole process as the surgeons cauterized everything as they cut through it, pinched and cut off the femoral artery and ciatic nerve with quick precision, broke a sweat and switched off as they worked through the femur with a hacksaw, and finally stretched and sewed the skin over the mess of tendons, muscle, and bone to tidy up the stump. Even cooler than the amputation was the anesthesia: the patient was semi-conscious and talking to a nurse for short periods late in the operation (thankfully NOT as the surgeons were violently shaking his leg with the hacksaw), and although was vaguely aware that something was going on behind the screen that blocked his face from the rest of his body, didn't express any pain or sensation. It was difficult to watch all this without wondering if the patient would have even needed an amputation under more developed Western medical care, but it was incredibly interesting nonetheless.

- Sanu invited us to attend the first ceremony (of four official ones) of this niece's wedding in Kathmandu, in which the bride receives an initial array of offerings from the groom (who doesn't attend this particular event) and his family. By accepting the first gift, the bride commences the celebration, and over the next week a host of rituals are played out between the new couple and their families. Although Ashley and I only saw a tiny part of the whole, we really enjoyed meeting Sanu's extended family. He even brought us to his brother's home to introduce us to his semi-bedbound father, a lanky and completely coherent 98-year-old professional singer/musician who spent his career singing traditional Newari songs at events around Nepal and was a star on Radio Nepal.

- Sanu also organized a well-attended dinner at a delicious restaurant in Lazimpat to send us off a few nights before our departure. Amongst the forty or so attendees were nearly half of FoST's board members, many of Sanu's family members we'd met at the wedding, a few of FoST part-time employees, and two of our friends who own adventure-travel companies and are interested in utilizing FoST's ideas in their business. Of course, Sanu couldn't throw a party of this magnitude without also getting everybody riled up about FoST's latest projects and successes, and showed the two BBC World Challenge clips plus GORP Productions' mini-documentary on FoST before presenting his latest award granted by the US EPA from the recent Partnership for Clean Indoor Air conference he attended in Uganda. It was absolutely fantastic and heart-warming to have all these FoST-people in one place recognizing the small contributions we've made to the organization and Nepal.

- Throughout our last week in KTM we spent quite a bit of time eating, drinking, and hanging out with Bishnu (owns Adventure Aves, a new rafting/kayaking/adventure tour company) and his business partner of sorts, Gopi (owns Cold Feet, a new trekking/climbing/adventure tour company). These guys are young, progressive, active, cosmopolitan, smart, and endlessly friendly -- and although they're entering a pretty crowded market of adventure-tour companies in Nepal, I'm sure they'll do very well. Gopi has already acquired land and set up the beginnings of a program that will combine community-volunteering with treks and other adventures for people visiting Nepal with tight schedules, and is very interested in utilizing FoST's briquettes and stoves within this operation.

We will definitely miss Kathmandu and all the friends we've made there, and the warm & caring spirit we were sent off with has ensured a return in the not-so-distant future.

Meanwhile, Bangkok has been a fun trip all on its own. We've been uber-tourists the past few days and have pampered ourselves silly with beautiful temple tours, delicious food (including a fun breakfast with Rob and Jai), haircuts, massages galore, and ample time in dental chairs. As Bangkok is far larger, more developed, and more cosmopolitan than Portland or Seattle can ever hope to be, we've kind of been through *extreme* culture shock here, so shouldn't wig out TOO much when we arrive in Portland tomorrow.

Back to BKK

We're a few hours away from the end of our time in Nepal, and have a ton of mixed emotions about leaving..

Which I'll write about soon from our hotel in Bangkok!

Chitwan

Last week we enjoyed a six-day trip to Chitwan Nat'l Park and the Trisuli River (redux of the failed rafting trip that was supposed to happen on the 11th). Chitwan is southwest of Kathmandu and lies along Nepal's border with India. The weather was warm, the land flat, and the people kind. We met up with our friends Peter and Krish (who we strolled the Annapurna Circuit with) and had a great time being full-on tourists for a few days. We checked out the park via elephant, canoe, jeep, and foot; I felt a little like Mowgli amongst pythons, domestic and wild elephants, huge rhinos, a grizzly-sized sloth bear, bison, tigers, crocodiles, and more!

It also seemed like all of our friends converged in the park while we were there. In addition to getting to hang out Peter and Krish, we also ran into friends Bishnu (who owns Adventure Aves, a new rafting/kayaking tour company out of KTM) and Alex, a volunteer with NOH. Check out the new Chitwan gallery to see the pics...

On the roof of the bus between Chitwan and Trisuli (coming back towards Kathmandu) I managed to step on a backpack that had a few porcupine-ish quills in it. One of them pierced my foot right next to my big toe .. in one hole and out another! Although the thin fountain of blood that streamed out of the top hole was pretty exciting for a second or two, a bit of pressure stopped the bleeding in less than 45 seconds, and two tiny wounds are the only sign of the incident. So far I've had no swelling or signs of infection (although I'm taking a round of antibiotics just in case) .. and hardly any pain. Kinda weird to have such an invasive trauma result in such a minor wound...

After a night sleeping in a tent on a roof in the river-side town of Fishling, we joined Bishnu for a huge rafting trip he'd organized down the Trisuli. I safety kayaked while Ashley joined the 80+ Nepali clients paddling the rafts and having a great time in the splashy class II/III under a hot Nepali sun. We rode on the bus roof back into KTM, and due to increased highway patrols within the city limits had to lie down flat for a solid half hour to hide from the cops... NOT the most comfortable thing in the world, but kinda fun to evade johnny law.

We've been pretty busy volunteering with FoST and the hospital since we've been back, and are now in the midst of exit-maneuvers as we prepare to depart from what has become a friendly new home for us. The last few days have included of lots of goodbye's, yummy dinners, joining part of a Newari wedding, observing a leg amputation, and the beginning stages of packing.... More to come...

Final Stretch . . .

We're down to our last two weeks in Nepal and have bittersweet feelings about being so close to the end. 99% of our time since we returned from Langtang has been spent in Kathmandu, and we're both a little tired of being stuck in the city. I even tried to escape yesterday to safety kayak for a commercial rafting trip, but an accident that shut down the highway about two hours outside Kathmandu forced the entire trip to turn around when we were only halfway to the river!

Of course, Kathmandu has had its fair share of fun activity lately.. The first national games in ten years were held last week, and despite a ton of furor about which groups could compete (even the athletic teams are divided by political and militia lines, and the People's Liberation Army protested the last-minute inclusion of the Nepali Army by pulling out all of their own athletes), the games seemed to go off rather well.. and it was fun to see all the athletes walking around Kathmandu in their warmups between contests. There was also a festival (I can't remember many of the details) that involved this large chariot (at left) that was hauled down the main boulevard from Jhamel to Patan amidst a lot of fanfare. Coming up on the 14th is the Nepali New Year, and cultural festivities are starting to pop up here and there in preparation.

Last week Sanu returned from international conferences in Kampala and Cyprus, and is now loaded with fresh ideas he'd like to apply here in Nepal. In Kampala FoST was recognized (one of four prizes awarded to a pool of 200+ participants) for its efforts to go beyond efficient stove design (what most other participants presented) and focus on alternative fuels (briquettes). We're already drawing up a few ideas for prototype production, and I joined Sanu a few days ago on a field trip to some of Kathmandu's metal yards, scrap yards, and large-scale metal fabrication shops to learn more about available materials and communicate our new ideas.

In other news, Sushmita (NOH employee) spent a few days in Dumrikharka last week, and reported that multiple families are continuing to produce and burn briquettes. They're even producing extras and stockpiling them for the wet monsoon months this summer! I've been considering returning to Dumrikharka myself to make sure everything was going smoothly, but with this good news I may save myself the LONG bus ride it takes to get there and back. I'm hopeful that the report I wrote will help NOH and future volunteers keep this project running strong in the coming months and years.

Our friends Krish and Peter (who we did the Annapurna Circuit with back in December) just got back from their 2nd trip round the Circuit, and we're excited to spend a few days with them down in Chitwan National Park between the 14th and 17th. We're super-psyched to see the Nepali lowlands, ride elephants, maybe see some rhinos, and avoid the malaria-ridden mosquitoes.

For now, I'm working on a few CAD drawings for FoST, and Ashley is continuing her observations/volunteering at Martyr's Memorial Hospital..

Back in the Big Dirty

Cloud lightning out the window of our new apartment in Thamel.

Update time!

Many things have happened in the past month since I last posted to this blog, so bear with me:

We had a fantastic time with Austin and Beth between March 5th and 25th. Thanks to a whole bunch of unexpected factors (see last post) we had a chance to show them a bunch of Kathmandu's sights and sounds before and after our trip to Langtang National Park. Once we finally got up north we had a fun, albeit dramatic, trek through fire, ice, sunshine and rain. Oh yeah, there were a few big mountains, too. Check out the Langtang photo journal in the gallery!

It was great to have a bit of home fly in to visit us, and made us extra-excited to be back in Portland. Our return date is coming up quickly (less than a month, now!) and we're scrambling to squeeze in everything we still want/need to do here.

As Beth and Austin were leaving, Ash and I were busy moving our stuff to a new apartment in Thamel, in a building owned and managed by Sanu's family. For our last month in Nepal, we'll residing in a downtown fifth-story penthouse of sorts... Amenities included consist of running water (brown), a leaky sink drain (a bucket underneath seems to take care of it), a briquette stove, a wooden bed frame, a chair, a coffee table, horribly sooty walls and ceilings, curtains (very important), one functioning incandescent bulb, and one power outlet (we still only get power for eight hours a day). A shared squat toilet, sans sink or shower, is down the hall. Despite this downgrade in accomodation, we're pretty stoked on this relatively impoverished and totally different urban experience. Not only are we in the gritty heart of urban Kathmandu, we're close to everything we need to do and have had an opportunity to get to know a few more of the subtleties of this place.

One of the biggest changes here over the past two weeks has been the onset of the spring rains! The weather patterns have been all sorts of unusual for the past fourteen months or so as Nepal experienced a dry monsoon season last summer/autumn and a very dry winter. As a result, electricity production has been pretty much impossible, and wells are drying up all over the country. A bunch of scientists are even concerned that large portions of Kathmandu valley could collapse as water tables are sucked dry. The recent afternoon rains (and snow in the mountains) have been bringing some relief and have provided some very entertaining thunderstorms in the valley. We can't get enough of it!

Over the past week I've been busy finishing up the written agenda and reports for the project we've been doing in the Ramechhap district (click here to download the latest pdf), getting photos gathered, researching product concepts for FoST and getting acquainted to our new digs, amongst other things. In April, I'll be focused on following up as necessary with Ramechhap (and maybe going back for another short visit) and developing concepts at FoST. Meanwhile, today is Ashley's first day shadowing at Martyr's Memorial Hospital, where she'll spend the next month watching and helping out on various rotations. Our friend Krish, also pre-med, did the same thing in February and had a great experience, so our hopes our high.

Aside from that, we're looking at a bit of river time (I'll be safety-boating for a large class II/III rafting trip on April 11) and three or four days down in Chitwan National Park riding elephants and (hopefully) spotting some rhinos and big bright birds.

The Royal Palace (just down the street from our new penthouse) opened as a museum about a month ago, and we joined throngs of Nepalis last Saturday to check it out. The sprawling palace and grounds have been pretty much vacant since the massacre in 2001, and sits today much as I imagine it was eight years ago. The buildings have this super-cheesy and sparse 60s/70s architecture and interior decoration, and it was pretty bizarre to consider that the place represents/ed the 'lap of luxury' for this nation..

Politics have continued to provide a never-ending comedy in the daily papers here.. Every day brings news of more back-stabbing closed-door meetings within the countless parties and subsets of parties, which usually result in pointless riots, bandhs, strikes, or killings. Nobody can figure out how to integrate all the small party-loyal militias into one army, the Maoists in charge seem to be driving for a one-party system empowered by social disorder and poverty, and China's (anti-Tibetian) whims are frequently carried out without a second thought. Stability in all sectors is still quite a ways off here...

We made the mistake of buying the first four seasons of House MD last week (ripped of course, at a cost of around $12), and have been sucked into 3-5 episodes per night lately.

We've been toying with the idea of spending a few extra days in Bangkok on our return trip to see some more temples, enjoy more massages, take care of some dental work, and maybe even participate in their never-ending political demonstrations (or not)!

And finally: what's up with this website/blog's new name? In short: 'hajur' is one of those Nepali words that can mean just about anything.. it works for 'sir,' 'pardon,' 'hello,' 'whaddup,' etc... So way back during the final days of the Annapurna trek we had a great night in Tatopani getting wasted on Marpha apple brandy. Krish (now infamous for taking gigantic gulps of the stuff rather than sipping it like the rest of us) had also been enjoying slices of a chocolate cake that was sitting under the bar. Upon finishing his second slice, Krish started talking about how much he needed a THIRD. The bartender (and cake enabler) was nowhere to be seen, and out of the blue Krish blurted, "WHERE'S MY HAJUR? I NEED SOME MORE CAKE!!" The phrase has stuck with us like .. um .. frosting on cake .. ever since and is somewhat emblematic of our whole experience here :)

Delayed

After my post the other night, Ashley came down with the same digestive issues I had a few days prior.. and we decided to hang out for an additional day in Kathmandu to give her a chance to improve. We moved our base of operations to a cheap, but nice, hotel in Thamel, and were planning on getting on a bus this morning. However, since today is Holi Day (more below), we soon learned that we'd have to stay in Kathmandu another additional day, since busses aren't running.

The children of Kathmandu have been preparing for Holi Day all week long.. What began as a celebration of color and culture in rural villages has turned into a water balloon throwing free-for-all event in the big city. All week balloons have been hurled from rooftops, side streets, car windows, behind-our-backs, etc.. targeting unsuspecting victims (usually women). These balloons are usually not balloons at all, but small clear plastic bags (like we get goldfish in) that hurt like hell! It's pretty much impossible to walk down the street (especially as white folks) without being targeted dozens of times.

TODAY, the actual holiday, most of the balloons contain bright pigments, and EVERYBODY is participating in this city-wide pelting contest. I'm gearing up to go find some balloons to buy down the street so we can join in the fun from our hotel's roof .. but I know that I'll be drenched and colorful by the time I return from the store (which is just across the street). Should be fun.

Last night after Ash was feeling a little better we checked out Swayambhu (the monkey temple) with Austin and Beth and then celebrated British Alex's birthday at a super-yummy steakhouse. We'll head out on a bus tomorrow morning towards Dunche, where we'll start our trek the following day. We're now planning on being back in Kathmandu the 22nd or 23rd.

Visitors!

We've been back in KTM for over a week now, and have kept ourselves massively busy. So busy that I have managed to neglect my computer almost entirely, and have been a completely lame blog-updater.

In short:

The volunteer house moved up the street in Dhapasi (Kathmandu's equivalent to Lake Oswego)! Papa's House brought a large group of girls to Kathmandu from Narti last week, and they are now living in the house formerly occupied by volunteers and the boys. We're now enjoying luxurious three story home located half-way between the old girls' house and the property with the new girls' and boys' houses.

We've spent most of our compy-time writing up a report on our project in Dumrikharka, and refining our proposal for future phases. I'll post all this when it's finished in late March.

I finally managed to go kayaking a few days ago! In November I found a friend in Bishnu Gurung, who recently opened a whitewater adventure company in Thamel (www.adventureaves.com). For my 'free' day on the 4th he hooked me up with another paddler, Bijan, to check out a fun class IV run on the Bhote Kosi. This run flows along the Peace Highway that China helped build between Kathmandu and Tibet, and provided us a few hours of splashy fun. Never mind the adventure getting to and from the river took just about 36 hours.

Austin and Beth arrived a few days ago! It's been super-fun to have visitors from home (let alone THESE visitors), and we've been busy figuring out logistics for our trek while doing a little bit of sightseeing around Kathmandu. We've been planning on a summit attempt of Naya Kanga, a 5846 m peak near the village of Langtang. Ashley and I spent a bunch of time in early February doing pre-trip logistics work for this climb, and thought we were all set. However, in the last few days we learned we'd been mis-informed about the climbing rules and regulations about this peak (and nearly all peaks in Nepal). To do the climb legally we'd need a sherpa-guide, which would change the whole dynamic of the trip, necessitate a different climbing style (we were planning on short-roping the technical sections of the climb -- with a guide we'd wind up following fixed lines), and therefore also necessitate a full team of porters to carry the additional gear we'd need. After thinking about this option for about half-a-second, we decided to ditch the summit attempt. We're still heading up the Langtang Valley with a tent, limited snow gear, and plans to climb a couple of the smaller peaks around Kyangyin, but there will be no steep-and-snowy summits for us--this time.

Rabbit sent a bag of Stumptown Coffee over with Austin and Beth. We are forever in her debt :)

There is a lot of exciting and semi-scary strife in southern Nepal right now, and it's threatening to spread northward. We don't anticipate we'll be affected too much for the rest of our time here, but are keeping a keen eye on the news.

We're heading out eaaarly tomorrow morning, and putting off packing until the power runs out. Austin and Ashley are singing Flight of the Conchords songs to Beth and American volunteer Alex, while British volunteer Emma is writing in her journal, British volunteer Alex is laughing and I am desperately finish this blabber-blog before the power disappears.

We'll be back in KTM from Langtang between March 21st and 23rd. Soon after our return we'll be moving our stuff to our new April digs: a fifth-story apartment in Thamel in a building owned and managed by Sanu Kaji's (of FoST) family. More volunteering, exploring and kayaking will fill our time through the end of April.

Back from Ramechhap

We're back! I'll put together a more complete synopsis of our trip to Dumrikharka in the next few days, but in short: everything went great! Now we're back in Kathmandu getting gear together for our upcoming trek/climb with Austin and Beth, putting together reports, and enjoying food other than dal bhat.

Check out my Everyday gallery to see the first batch of pics I've uploaded from this micro-adventure.

Off to Dumrikharka

The Shree Sham Primary School in Dumrikharka

We're taking off earrrrrly tomorrow morning on another wonderful locals-bus to Manthali and Dumrikharka in the Ramechhap district, where we'll be teaching folks about FoST's briquette-making process and alternative stove technologies for a bit more than two weeks. We'll be far away from the internet while we're there, but our cell phone will work just fine (listed at nepal.ethanfsmith.com/contact.html).

We're excited for a bit of uber-rural fun!

Busy

So it's really really hard to keep up with blogging when there are only four usable hours of power per day and soo much stuff that needs to be accomplished with those precious electrons :)

Bear with this stream of memories:

I spent most of mid-January helping Sanu get ready for a four-day solar cooking workshop that was held at the FoST hq in Thamel. I had designed and built a solar panel cooker that we wanted to test and show off, and the workshop spent every electrified hour finishing up a slew of solar parabolic cookers that had been ordered by participants.

Sanu and me working on a grant application for a pending workshop.

The first day of the workshop we had everything set up for the 10:30 commencement, made milk tea, arranged biscuits on a plate, and waited. And waited. One person showed up at 11:00, and joined us as we waited for more. Two Rotary Club officials stopped by at 11:30 to officially inaugurate the workshop. They made a few calls and took off fifteen minutes later. Another participant showed up at 12:30. Sanu finally decided he'd proceed, with just two of the anticipated fifteen folks who were signed up. It was cloudy though, so we couldn't actually demonstrate the solar cookers. Frusterating.

The next day seven sisters showed up at noon and stayed for a few hours of discussion about solar cooking theory. The day after was like the first.. two folks showed up.It was cloudy.

I didn't come in on the fourth day. Neither did anyone else. It was still cloudy. This whole thing was really weird, because most workshops in FoST's history have been wildly popular success stories.

There are a host of potential reasons the roster didn't show up: there were massive street protests about a two-week-old garbage collection strike; participants were from several different communities, so they weren't propelled by the group momentum that seems so integral in anything that happens here; it was so cloudy in the mornings nobody figured the workshop would be proceeding; participants had previously paid their 20% share of the cost of equipment and the workshop (the other 80% was subsidized by the Rotary Club), had written that cost off, and couldn't justify missing a day or two of work to attend; for whatever reasons, participants just weren't excited about solar cooking..

In any case, we all learned a lot of lessons about workshop pre-planning logistics and promotion. Hopefully Sanu won't have to go through another ordeal like this anytime soon.

On the bright side, in the few sunny periods we've had since, my solar panel cooker has worked great. With a few tweaks, it should be ready to go into limited production within the next few months.

Solar parabolic cooker on the left. My prototype solar panel cooker on the right.

Through late January Ashley continued shadowing Dr. Roka in the OPD at the Ayuraveda College downtown in Kathmandu. She learned a lot from the residents she observed with and had a ton of fun. Every morning a long line of patients waited for the doctor to come in, each grasping their life's medical records and charts, hoping that they could be served on a first come first served basis. Most patients had either liver complications, acute peptic disorders, some form of lung complications or hypertension. Patients would usually bring their extended families with them, so the 12' x 12' office was usually full of: the doctor, his big desk, two residents, Ashley, three patients, their families, and however many waiting patients could fit. Chaos.. but it seemed to work, and Ash returned every day with a smile and is even more excited to start school in the fall. The doctor told me Ashley was more passionate, organized and eager to learn than most of the other foreign students he'd mentored or met. She learned a lot of medical terms and questions (in Nepali), took exquisite notes, and even started to get pens and handouts from drug reps...

Ashley outside the Ayurevedic clinic she shadowed at.

Throughout early January Ashley and I were planning on spending February implementing alternative technologies at a NOH-funded home for rescued Kamlari girls in S-SW Nepal. Amongst our goals were to introduce FoST's briquette presses, build an efficient wood/briquette cooking stove to replace the open pit they cook over now, and to investigate options for a biogas stove and/or dry latrine. I was just about to travel to Naarti (location of the home in the Dang district) for some preliminary observation/research when Michael returned from there and alerted me that many changes are on the horizon for this home -- including a dramatic location shift for many of the girls -- within the next year. In other words, this wasn't going to be an ideal place to introduce long-term infrastructure improvements and alternative technology education.

Plan B: NOH funds two small schools in the Ramechhap district, about 80 km east of Kathmandu, one of which Michael had never visited and knew very little about. The villages are hours away from the nearest roads, and folks cook just about all their food over wood collected from rapidly disappearing forests (they call it 'jungle') nearby. It looked like we might be able to introduce an alternative technology program (that would continue beyond our stay) in one or both of these villages... so volunteer coordinator Sushmita, Ashley, and I decided to take a whirlwind trip of the area to check out the scene in both villages, have conversations with school staffs and community members, and determine what a good potential program would be.

We technically had seats for our twelve hour bus ride to the town of Manthali, but that didn't make the ride pleasant. Local busses in Nepal get packed. Really packed. People filled every cubic centimeter of the interior of the bus (I had a woman sitting on half of my lap and another guy's rear consumed most of my seat's headspace), and the rack on top couldn't have held another gram. Yes people had to get off to go up a few hills. Yes we popped a tire on a bumpy descent. Although I petitioned to ride on top of the bus, Sushmita convinced us that our precious seats inside were the way to go.

Changing the bus tire on the way to Manthali .. to a spare that looked worse than the ruined tire coming off.

In Mantali we stationed in a dingy little motel near the center of town. I popped outside at sunset and found a gathering of around thirty people around a candle lit yin-yang and circle of diamonds drawn in flour on the street. A local Nepali English teacher tried to explain to me what was going on as community leaders read poems and gave small speeches. I understood about 5% of what he said... something about a three day festival celebrating the return of the sun and the diamonds found in nearby hills. Nontheless, it was pretty cool. During dinner we tried eating our dal bhat with our hands -- Nepali style. Sushmita showed us the trick of using your thumb to lift balls of rice from palm to mouth. I proceeded to fling food all over the place like a one-year-old.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 (our waking hour for every day of this little adventure), met the principal of the Shree Sham Primary School, and hiked about 1000 m up a steep hill (it would be called a mountain anywhere else) to the tiny village of Dumrikharka, home to said school. On the way we got passed by countless tiny women carrying triple our loads. A rare clear day made for amazing Himalayan views as we wandered back a few centuries. Once we made it up the hill we were introduced to our super-charming host family (who don't speak a speck of English) and were served some of the zestiest dal bhat we've enjoyed yet in the dark floor-level kitchen of their earth and wood home.

Morning view from our hotel in Manthali. Dumrikharka sits near the top of the hill in the distance.

At ten we walked through this pastoral landscape to the school, talked with the principal and a few community members for a bit, and then were surprised to see that a huge number of students and their parents were congregating outside. Unbeknownst to us, the principal had invited what seemed to be most of the women of the village to join their children in welcoming us. After a brief introduction from the principal, our greeters lined up to bless us with huge tikkas (red pigment and marigolds on the forehead) and mallas (like leis). Hilarity ensued as our foreheads were completely covered in bright red pigment and marigold, we were suffocated by innumerable bright mallas, and we tried our best to hold onto seventy handfulls of flower petals. I'm pretty sure this was the coolest and funniest welcome I've ever received -- I LOVE this tradition!

This was just the beginning...

Every one of these people welcomed us with a tikka and malla blessing.

The rest of the day was spent helping teach at the school, trying our best to talk with villagers via Nepanglish, scoping out potential raw materials for briquette-making and improving our finger-feeding technique on massive piles of dal bhat. Aside from cell phones and the occasional 50w pv panel, the tools used and methods practiced by villagers here haven't changed much in the last few centuries. Yolked oxen pull simple plows through terraced corn fields; most families own a few goats, chickens, cows, and an ox; rope is made from the fibers of the huge aloe-cactus things that grow everywhere; meals are cooked in smoky kitchens over open wood fires; water is pulled from wells that dot the hillsides.

Ethan attempts to teach math in Nepaglish.

About as dense as it gets in Dumrikharka.

Another early start and long hike over a mountain and down to the Sun Kosi eventually brought us to Mudkeswori, an incredibly tiny settlement that time has almost completely forgotten. The language barrier was pretty thick here, and Ash and I were pretty confused when we followed what seemed like a random woman down the hill to what seemed like a random village and were served more delicious dal bhat with trout caught from the nearby river. Only after we walked across a small valley and she unlocked the door to the Mudkeswori Primary School did we realize this woman Sushmita was calling "Miss" was the head teacher there--about two hours after meeting her and ten minutes before we departed. Apparently teachers are the only people in Nepal who are called "Miss," and we were supposed to pick up on that. It was a school holiday, so the children in the area were all playing various games .. until we showed up, at which point they all dropped what they were doing to follow us around in silence, staring at us like we had dropped in from another planet. Oh, and "Miss" owned the largest pony-sized goat either of us had ever seen. Almost a giraffe. Really. Really. Big.

The head teacher at Mudkeswori Primary School served us delicious dal bhat and locally caught fish.

After hiking back up to the top of the hill/mountain to the village of Ramechhap Bazaar we settled into a humongous motel room and chowed down another big serving of dal bhat. Dehydrated from a long day and feeling pretty confident about groundwater pulled at the ridgeline of this remote hill, I made the mistake of downing about a gallon of tap water with dinner, and paid the price a few days later. Thank goodness for incredibly cheap anti-protozoals.

There was a lot of hiking involved and a huge amount of elevation gain and loss... By the end of our escapades we decided we had just inaugurated the "Ramechhap Trekking Circuit."

After our hiking blitz we were all more than ready to get on a bus at dawn the next morning in Ramechhap Bazaar to start the long journey back to Kathmandu. Lucky for us, there was a nation-wide bus strike that day (this happens ALL the time here), so we decided to hike back down to Mantali via Dumrikharka, where we figured there might be some alternatives to buses if the strike was going to continue for more than a day. Back in Dumrikharka we were served more huge servings of dal bhat, chewed on raw sugarcane, and spent the day teaching again in the school. Trying to keep groups of 5-15 year-olds in order is tough enough. Keeping them in order when they only speak marginal English proved to be a fun challenge. We spent a little time in each of the six small classrooms and gradually began to figure out different approach styles for each age group.

The principal and students of Shree Sham Primary School.

That night back down in Manthali we took great pleasure in a bottle of Pepsi and kept our dinners to manageable portions of chow mein.. what a relief! Later on we tried our best to avoid glancing at the fist-sized spider hanging out over the skanky squat toilet we were sharing with the singing drunkard who spent most of the night getting wasted in the hall right outside our room (this guy looked and smelled fantastic the next morning).

We were up at dawn again the next morning hoping in vain that the bus strike would be over. Not so much. A few hours later the strike ended, but the first bus out of town got so overcrowded that the transit police (who are normally pretty nonchalant about frighteningly top-heavy vehicles) forced a good portion of passengers (including us) off, and wouldn't even let anybody stay on the roof. Fast-forward a few more hours, and we were sitting in the back of an old farm truck bouncing down a crazy-steep dirt road on the first leg of a nine hour journey that involved four vehicles, a half-hour hike, nearly missing a connecting bus, a super-crowded roof we shared with about forty other people over a steep silty road, a girl who was hell-bent on pushing Ashley off said roof, a Nepali comic who kept just about everyone on top of the bus laughing for hours, and a whole lot of dust. Sushmita has a mortal fear of riding on the roof, and despite our efforts to get her up decided to stand in the crowded, dust-filled cattle car beneath us. I was anything but envious.

Check out the full gallery of photos from this little escapade.

Ash enjoys the view from the top of our second bus on the way back from Manthali.

Back in Kathmandu we put together a rough proposal for a multi-phase program to be based in Dumrikharka. The proposal outlines a plan to introduce briquette presses and stoves, begin producing enough briquettes to raise money for the school, and establish the framework for a lasting alternative technologies program at the school that future NOH volunteers could contribute to. Although Dumrikharka isn't a perfect location for this program (it really doesn't produce many of its own waste materials .. many of these will have to come from Manthali down the hill; and the region isn't yet classified as a 'conservation area', which means that there is not a huge financial incentive to find alternatives to wood), the school and villagers seemed very enthusiastic about what we proposed there and the close relationship the school has with NOH should provide a stable platform to move the project forward once Ash and I are gone. We'll be heading back up to Dumrikharka in a few days, and will stay there through the end of February as we teach a briquette workshop, manage our implementation plan, and volunteer in the primary school. We won't have internet access while we're there, but our cell phone should work for emergencies.

Over the past week while we've been waiting for the FoST workshop to produce two briquette presses for Dumrikharka, we've been putting together training materials, learning more Nepali (Ash has been doing much better at this than I have been), eating anything but dal bhat, and wrapping up a slew of random projects we'd accumulated in January. Amongst other things, I helped Sanu fill out a grant application to fund another round of solar cooking and briquette-making workshops, continued a bit of stateside contract work, visited an inspiring German orphanage, checked out a buddhist monastery we might spend some time at in April, and helped dial in some of the basic logistics for a climbing trip we'll be doing in March.

In early January I met the founder and brains behind Nepalhilfe Beilngries, a well established (since 1996) German INGO that amongst other things, operates a childrens home and organic farm, and has funded numerous school construction projects around Nepal. This organization was of special interest to me because it is making a huge effort to use alternative technologies to be create a self-sufficient infrastructure, generate income, minimize its environmental impact, and provide an educational model to the beneficiaries of the organization and community at large. Ashley and I took a day last week to tour their Kinderhaus and gardens in Lubhu, just southeast of Kathmandu. The office and childrens home primarily operate on solar power; the kitchen utilizes a combination of biogas and solar cookers (although one gas cylinder is occasionally used to bake bread in an oven); childrens' solid waste is combined with food scraps from the kitchen, food scraps from several restaurants in Kathmandu, and greywater from the kitchen to create a regular supply of biogas; rainwater is collected from the roof in a huge cistern and filtered on-site for consumption; and didi's and students create an average of 400 briquettes from waste materials every day (using three FoST presses), which are in turn sold to local businesses to generate income for the organization. The whole operation is very well thought out on many levels and left us truly inspired. Their website is in German (although Google Translator can fix this), and gives a decent overview of some of their activiites: http://www.nepalhilfe.org/

Nepalhilfe plans for a nearby plot of land that is being developed as a model in sustainable agricultural techniques.

We visited the Kapan Monastery on a whim with Sushmita and another volunteer, Nicki, a few days ago, and were quite drawn to the place. The Monastery sits on a hill high above the smog and rush of the Bouda district of Kathmandu, and is chock-full of Tibetan Buddhist monks, western students, beautiful gardens, and lively parrots. We checked out their website when we got home and are thinking about attending a 7-day 'Intro to Tibetan Buddhism' course and retreat in early April..

Beckoning faces at Kapan Monastery.

Our pending climbing trip in March should be super-fun, and we're really excited that Austin's girlfriend, Beth (whom we can't wait to meet .. a day before Austin gets here), decided to join us the other day. We're going to attempt a summit of Naya Kanga, a relatively straight-forward 5,846-meter peak in the Langtang range north of Kathmandu. The trek and climb should last just about two weeks, leaving another few days for us to do touristy things with Austin and Beth in Kathmandu. We can't wait!

All the Pieces

A few mornings back I was pleased to see a familiar face walk into the FoST workshop, where I was in the midst of building a prototype solar panel cooker.

Maya Gurung, a super progressive hotel owner who I interviewed during our trek around Annapurna Circuit, was visiting with her son. She remembered my sales pitch for FoST from her hotel in Yak Kharka, and stopped in to talk with Sanu for a bit after seeing the small FoST sign on the main street in Galkophaka the day prior. She had told me during the interview that she'd experimented with briquette making on her own in the past, but was very interested in the process and press offered by FoST, especially for use by her son, a lanky 20-year old with cerebral palsey.

Over the next hour, Sanu coached Maya's son through the processes of creating paper pulp, cutting up leaves and grasses, mixing them into a slurry of other ingredients, and pressing the slurry into briquettes. He picked everything up pretty quickly and had a huge grin on his face the whole time. He understood the concept of money, and got extra excited about the products he was creating when he learned each one was worth a few rupees.

He had so much fun that the next day he convinced his mom to bring him back so he could make a few more..

Watching all this made everything FoST stands for really fall into place for me. Here in the middle of a fairly chaotic and undeveloped nation was a mentally challenged man having a blast turning readily available waste materials into an uber-economical cooking fuel that his mom could use in her hotels. So much good on so many levels..

Yams!

On Tuesday we were invited to celebrate Makar Sankranti, celebrating the new month (Nepali calendar) and return of the sun, with a few of our new friends down the street from Papa's House. The day has a few traditions which folks seemed to loosely abide by: you're not supposed to utter a single word before taking a bath in the morning; and everyone is supposed to eat a TON of yams, roti (rice-based bread), and sweets.

A few of the other volunteers and I had a seat on a rug outside our friends' combined home and restaurant and pawed through a FEAST of boiled yams (six or seven varieties I think..), sweet potatoes, roti, green buckwheat balls, candied stuff, yak butter, burnt sugar candies and milk tea. The yams were only boiled and cut into big chunks, and silverware was nowhere to be seen, so eating them was a fun mess of starchy finger-peeling. I never imagined I'd eat so many yams in one sitting!!!

To top it all off, everyone proudly wore a yam-starch tikka on their forehead (at least in the morning) to mark the day.

Whirlwind of Rhythm

Happy New Year!

A few updates just before the power goes out again:

- New Years Eve was a hoot: we helped demonstrate FoST briquettes and stoves at a table in the middle of Thamel until dusk, and then had a delicious traditional Newari dinner with solar-distilled whiskey at Sanu's house. Too tired to party, we Skyped our parents and passed out just after our clock struck 12.

- Load shedding (code for brown-out periods) increased to 12 hours per day throughout Nepal. Most days (but not all) we have power from 8am-2pm, and 8pm-2am.

- Skylark English School, attended by most of the kids from Papa's House, had a 'Sports Day' on Saturday to launch a 2-week winter vacation. Held at the National Police Academy, around 350 kids ranging from 4-17 years old displayed insanely disciplined choreographed drills and marches, and duked it out in 40 separate events, including 'Eat the Banana', 'Put the Shoe', 'Dress the Princess', and classics such as 'Wheelbarrow Race', '400m Relay', and '100m Dash'. Despite the fact that the event took ALLL day long, it was great fun to see so many active kids and their supportive parents.

- Although Ashley wasn't able to take the 2-week course at the Ayurvedic clinic (they couldn't start until the beginning of Feb), she found a doctor at the Ayurvedic hospital downtown who invited her to shadow him for the next month. Today was day #1, and she had a great time.

- Austin bought his plane tix to Nepal, and will be here March 6 - 25 .. longer and earlier than we were expecting! Since he'll be here almost twenty days, we'll most likely try to put together a self-support climbing trip in either Langtang (north of Kathmandu) or out of the Annapurna Base Camp.. I'm looking forward to attempting a peak (even a relatively small one) while we're in the Himalayas.

- Both of these factors affect our intended schedule; we're now planning to spend most of February installing energy-efficient infrastructure and helping out at the home for rescued girls in Narti (near Lamahi, in the Dang District, S-SW Nepal). I'll also go for there for a few days in the next week or two to do some preliminary research. April will be primarily spent in and around Trisuli Bazaar, although that could definitely change.

- Otherwise I've been spending my days developing concepts at FoST and working on a few other projects. We're definitely getting into a comfortable pattern, and developing some great friendships here.

Annapurna Journals

We've been back in Kathmandu for nearly a week now (time flies!!) and we've been busy busy busy!

Amongst other things, I've been preparing the hundreds of photos I took on the trek and cherry-picking the best ones to post in the Gallery section of nepal.ethanfsmith.com. In lieu of writing a lot about the experience here, I decided to try writing a photo-journal on this trip, and wrote captions for just about every photo while we were on the trail. At the moment the photos haven't all been uploaded, but you can explore our first few days here.

Coming back into the chaos that is Kathmandu was surprisingly pain-free after our 19 fantastic days on the trail and an uber-relaxing 18 hours in Pokhara. After unpacking a bit at the boy's home and recovering from an exceptionally long bus ride, we celebrated Christmas eve by grabbing yummy coffee, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate croissants in Thamel (Kathmandu's touristy district -- and home to many yummy bakeries, including our favorite: The Pumpernickle Bakery), and then splitting up for a few hours to do a little Christmas shopping for eachother. We even bought knit stockings ahead of time so Santa would have something to fill :)

This was our first Christmas away from our families, and we are very thankful that we had the opportunity to have multiple video-conferences with loved ones during their holiday festivities and our own. Still -- we missed being around friends, family, and egg nog, and made us excited to be around for the holidaze next year...

Only 5% of Nepalese are Christian, and in Kathmandu Christmas is acknowledged, but not heavily celebrated. At Papa's House, on the other hand, Christmas is a much anticipated event, and the boys here were treated to presents galore under a small tree (at 5am no less), hot chocolate, Christmas movies, and a very festive spirit. The star of this Christmas was a new puppy, a very cute, very soft, very small female mutt the boys decided to name Snowball (picture to come). While we (and the other volunteers) were a bit dubious of this idea at first, Snowball is acclimating to this place very well, and has been under the very good care of Vinod, the 20-something Nepali man-cub who looks after the boys here.

In the days since, Ashley has been researching and visiting a nearby Ayurvedic clinic that she hopes to take a comprehensive course from, and has spent a few days playing with the babies at a government-sponsored orphanage here in Kathmandu (I visited for a bit today -- the babies are so responsive to any attention that is given them that even spending a few hours there was a very rewarding experience).

Meanwhile, I've been compiling photos, piecing together data from research I did on the trek for a pending report, conceptualizing new ideas with Sanu at FoST, and laying the groundwork for the next four months we have to play with here in Nepal (where time is already flying).

We'll reside primarily in Kathmandu for at least the next few weeks while I work closely with FoST and Ashley (hopefully) takes courses at the Ayurvedic clinic. Then we're off to Narti and Trisuli Bazaar to implement FoST products, help with basic health care, and teach what we can about basic resource conservation.

Back in Pokhara

We arrived back in Pokhara a few hours ago from a wonderful 19 days on the trail. We had an amazing time and have many stories to share. We're taking an early bus back to Kathmandu tomorrow and I'll be posting a recap within the next few days.

For now, we're basking in the glow provided by our first hot showers since Thailand, and are about take our guide, Peter, out on the town for his thirty-somethingth birthday.

Namaste!

To the Hills

It became apparent during the our first few days in Kathmandu that Ashley and I needed to escape to the hills sooner than later in order to get a true taste of rural Nepal. While our initial plan was to jump straight into work here, we found ourselves a bit stuck while trying to define and schedule our time over the next five months. The problem? We're hoping to accomplish a myriad of things in rural Nepal, but have no context to base our direction or decisions on. Several people recommended we go on a trek (tourist-speak for 'a long walk') to experience another of the culture here. We first planned on a short week-long self-supported trip in the mountains of Langtang, to the north of Kathmandu, leaving November 29. However, when another volunteer at Papa's House, Krish, invited us to come with him on a guided trip around the Annapurna Circuit, we quickly decided we didn't have any good reasons to say "no." We were planning on doing this trek in the spring because December is a bit past the recommended season for this route, but since weather here has been holding a pretty nice sunny pattern, we all figured (guide service included) that we would be good to go.

The guide service we're working with, Alps in Nepal, has a deal with NOH, in which 10% of the fees from volunteers who trek with the service go back to NOH. After spending a bit of time talking them down to an all-inclusive fee we could all chew on, we were told a realistic start-date for this 20-day trip wouldn't be until the following Wednesday, December 3. As we soon found, we'd need every one of those extra days in Kathmandu in order to learn some basic Nepali, visit a few of the tourist areas (finally!), replicate our documents, extend our visas, replace my walk-around lens (the aperture stopped working intermittantly .. probably due to some Thai & Nepali grit), buy snacks for the trail, do laundry, track down some Nepali kayakers who will be here in the spring, and have a few more meetings with Sanu at FoST. The horrible traffic, short days, and unpredictable power outages in this city make errands take a LONG time, and getting around is a bit draining.

We miraculously managed to finish up all of our tasks tonight, and are all packed and ready for our 6 AM departure towards the west.

Being a client on such a straight-forward hike is really strange for me .. I have almost always been a guide or independent in similar situations .. and I'm really weirded out by the porter-factor. Granted, we're going to be lodged and fed in small villages every night of this journey, so we don't need tents or cooking equipment, and we're not doing any climbing, so we don't need any technical equipment, but these guys are still going to be hauling our gear from straps on their foreheads as we, the clients, bobble merrily along with nary a care in the world on our 'holiday.' Perhaps even weirder than the porter-factor: I don't need to worry about ANY logistics.. we all just follow directions and relax. While I feel like all this service takes away from the adventure a bit, it's also the established norm on the Annapurna Circuit, so by partaking in the guide/porter option we're actually getting the 'whole' experience?? Either way, I'm stoked on our guide, Peter, and am really excited to get out of the city for a while.

I'll still be doing some volunteer work while trekking, and had good conversations with Sanu the past few days about things I can start sketching, learning, and sharing while on this mini-adventure. At all of our stops, I'll be interviewing cooks and lodge-owners about the alternative technologies they use to cook food, heat water, purify water, deal with solid waste, etc.. in order find out how some of these technologies can be improved. We're packing a few kgs of Sanu's briquttes to demonstrate where appropriate, and have a host of leaflets, videos (believe it or not, many of these remote lodges have TVs hooked up to solar-panel-powered batteries), and price lists we'll use to try and hawk Sanu's wares. In addition, I'll be experimenting with new solar-cooker forms, and sketching a bunch of ideas that I'll have the chance to build at FoST's shop in Kathmandu upon our return. I'm looking forward to this side project, and think this location will be a great place to learn and think.

A grand schedule for our time in Nepal finally began to emerge from the woodwork today, as Ashley, Sanu, and I sat down in front of a calendar and projected our goals forward. For us, this whole trip has been a study in creating our own multi-faceted adventure, and we're finally at a point where we have enough knowledge and context to start pinpointing some specific projects and needs.

At the moment, we're looking at spending another few weeks in Kathmandu upon our return, during which time I'll be primarily working with Sanu on refining existing designs and (hopefully) creating a few new ones, and Ashley hopes to take a two-week course in Ayurvedic healing. In late January through early March, we're looking at spending time in and around Trisuli Bazaar and Narti. In Trisuli, Ashley will shadow in a clinic, and I'll focus on introducing and implementing Sanu's briquette stoves to one of the schools NOH supports in a village that is a two hour hike from the main town. NOH helps support a home for rescued Kamlari girls in very-rural Narti (located in south-central Nepal), and we will help arrange a FoST workshop there, so that the rescued girls can learn to make briquettes from waste and produce a fantastic alternative to the wood currently used for cooking and boiling water.

Come mid-March our former housemate, Austin, is planning to visit us for two weeks, and we'll probably go off on a fun climb somewhere. We're saving April for project wrap-ups .. and who knows what else .. there are a lot of cool potentials in the pipeline.

We won't have any computer or internet access while we're on the Annapurna Circuit, so wish us the best, and check back just before Christmas to see pictures and read stories.. We should be back in Kathmandu December 23.

Cheers!

FoST Workshop

We spent our first three days here observing a workshop put on by FoST (Foundation for Sustainable Technologies), one of the organizations we're planning to work with, on how to make cooking briquettes from waste materials. The workshop provided us a wonderful way to get to know Sanu Kaji, the founder of FoST whom I've been corresponding with, become acquainted with the briquette-making process, and interact with the nearly forty urban and rural Nepalese men and women in attendance. The workshop was held at a building that was still under construction at the new bus station in Kathmandu (Gongabu Bus Park), and we took over one side of the concrete roof (soon to become the floor of the second story).

The workshop was sponsored by two Rotary clubs, and most attendees were members of various Nepali organizations who received a stipend to attend the conference with. Nonetheless, it was encouraging to see just about everybody get down and dirty on the Bus Park roof as we manually pulped office paper, cut up long grass and sticks into tiny bits, mashed it all into a slurry with our bare feet, squeezed the water out and created briquettes with simple presses, and left everything to dry in the hot winter sun. The resulting briquettes are far more efficient and long-lasting than wood, create 70% less smoke than wood, do not contribute to deforestation, are the least expensive fuel option on the Nepalese market, and can be produced by rural villages from their waste materials and other quickly renewing resources (grasses/nuts/etc..).

On the first evening of the workshop, Sanu Kaji invited Ashley and I over to his place in Thamel for a drink and dinner. After a taxi-ride through the worst grid-lock of my life, a stop the butcher, and a harrowing game of follow-the-leader through more dark-crazy-crowded-narrow streets, we sat down in Sanu's sitting room and ate a delicious traditional meal prepared by Sanu's wife (using a chicken we picked up from the butcher just before), drank deliciously smooth homemade whiskey, and talked about projects to come in the months ahead.

By the end of the workshop Ashley and I had made friends with a bunch of Nepalese folks, two other volunteers (a Frenchman who seems to be involved with every NGO in Nepal, his Japanese
girlfriend, and a Shell employee from Singapore who is helping Sanu with marketing), and the FoST crew. It was great to watch the pride participants took in their work, and they were properly rewarded during a closing ceremony, complete with certificates signed by the dignitaries from the Rotary.

All in all, this was a really fun way to be introduced to 'real' Nepal, and set us up well for a productive experience with FoST.

Beruit by day; Bethlehem by night

Looks like we made it through the airport in Bangkok just in time! A few days ago the anti-government protesters blocked a main highway to the airport, two days ago saw two blasts in the terminal, and yesterday both of Bangkok's airports were shut down, delaying hundreds of flights and putting the whole region on edge. Meanwhile, we've spent the last week getting into the on-again off-again groove of Kathmandu.

On the surface this city is large, noisy, and dirty. The smog is thicker and more acidic than I ever imagined smog could be. The roads are a chaotic honking free-for-all where pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, cows, goats, and dogs all compete for space. You can't drink the water, the showers are cold, the power is sporadic, dogs bark all night, and most buildings aren't heated. Yet there is something about this town and its people that has been drawing me closer day after day, a warm embrace that beckons us to extend our stay and return often. The people here are kind, thoughtful, skilled, and remain deeply connected to their cultural roots. A lot of delicious food (from rice to wheat to cows, goats, and chickens) is grown and raised within the city limits, and I imagine that the bulk of our intake the past week has originated within fifteen miles of here. Because the bulk of the population is poor, material possessions are often prized and taken care of, and almost nothing (except for packaging) is discarded.

The inherent problems of pollution and waste that have come from diesel engines, brick-making factories, incinerators, and western packaging seem insurmountable. The costs involved to institute a waste management program and clean-air standards are beyond the scope of this poor nation. But with small groups of committed citizens at work all over the Kathmandu Valley, I feel there is some hope that this city will one day have clean streets and be clear-aired.

We've been staying at the volunteer hostel portion of NOH's Papa's House 2 (above the boys home--a girls home, Papa's House, is just up the road). Here we've shared the top two floors of a very nice building with between five and seven other volunteers hailing from the States, England, France, and Sweden, and here for a variety of durations and purposes. Most of us share a common bedroom, and we all share a bathroom, kitchen, and office. The place is actually much plusher that either of us had imagined it would be. Downstairs live 24 boys between the ages of five and fifteen, supervised by their "daddy," Vinod, a native of Kathmandu in his early 20s, and several didi's (female caretakers). The boys are a riot, and have been a lot of fun to play with, teach, and learn from. Most of them speak pretty decent English, so they've been easy to communicate with, and have helped us learn our first few Nepali phrases.

As I write this Ashley is over at the girls house with another volunteer, Tamra, helping to teach an art class to the girls who haven't yet been admitted to the local private primary school, Skylark, where most of the boys and girls spend their days Sunday thru Friday (Saturday is the day of rest here). With the exception of Michael Hess (Papa), males aren't allowed in the girl's home, so my only interactions with the girls have been in their courtyard and on the way to school. They seem like just as much fun as the boys.

Vacation Squared

A frustrating series of logistical miracles led us from a relaxing oil massage in Ton Sai to a missed shuttle connection in Ao Nang to an overcrowded taxi-pickup to the Krabi Bus Terminal (home to lots of buses) to a last-second taxi ride to the Krabi Port (unlikely home to only one bus -- ours) to a nearly missed VIP bus towards Bangkok to a 2:30 am transfer to a local government bus in Pran Buri to a much needed and fantastically comfortable bed at our friend Rob's house in Hua Hin.

Our time in Hua Hin proved to be an unexpectedly luxurious vacation from our vacation. Our hosts Rob (fishes with Ashley's father in Alaska), his girlfriend Jai, and their golden retriever Tuk-Tuk, took on the role of tour guides as they showed us around town, introduced us to their favorite haunts and restaurants, watched hours of movies with us in their beautiful house, and woke at an ungodly hour to drive us to Bangkok for our flight to Nepal.

Hua Hin itself is a popular but quiet weekend beach getaway for Bangkok's middle and upper classes, and is home to the vacation palace of the Royal Family. It also hosts quite a few European and American retirees, who can be found wandering the streets at all hours in their Hawaiian shirts, khaki cargo shorts, and faded loafers. Lots of small shops and restaurants line the streets, and a few small malls and markets host hundreds of merchants hawking the same merchandise that can be found all over town.

We found an exceptionally large ratio of ice cream shops per capita .. no matter where we were, a Swensons (really good sundaes), Haagen-Daaz, Baskin Robbins, or Dairy Queen was never far. Of course, a two-scoop cone at Haagen Daaz cost about twice as much as one night of lodging in Ton Sai (but it was sooo worth it)!

Thailand's road systems are all influenced by silly British ideas, and getting around town was a really weird experience. While everyone drives on the 'wrong' side of the road (I can handle this), and traffic rules are rarely heeded (I can also handle this), there are only rarely places to turn right across any main highway, and streets off the highway are rarely interconnected. Thus, u-turns were a mandatory and very frequent maneuver wherever we were going. I see the advantages to this system........ but it was just so weird.

On our second day in Hua Hin, Rob and Jai took us an hour south to Prachuap Khiri Khan, home to the 'Monkey Temple.' A hill sits between a monastary and the sea. Sitting at the top of 396 stairs sits a small temple/shrine complex with a beautiful view of the surrounding area. Living on the hill are roughly 4,000 monkeys, many in dubious health, and ALL of them very interested in tourists and their food (imagine being inside the monkey-house at an old school zoo...). A six or seven year old Thai boy, Pun, adopted us as soon as we got out of Rob's truck and served as our 'tour-guide' as we hoofed our way up the stairs to the temple. This kid was practically a monkey himself, and dealt with the more aggressive monkeys with far more panache than any of us could have mustered. Although a large male approached Ashley on our journey to the top and forcefully stole a bottle of juice from her, most of the monkey's were a bit more passive-aggressive. It was all great fun, but the unpredictability of the monkeys left us all a bit on edge.

That night we were all tuckered out, and after a few rounds of Johnny Walker, we wound up getting sucked into 'The Holiday' and 'Bank Job' from the comfort of Rob's huge and awesome bed/couch. We were so lethargic that we decided to call up a local Italian restaurant for delivery, and gorged on hot linguine, calzones, and gnocchi. For all we knew that evening, we had been magically whisked back to the US.

Food with Rob and Jai was actually pretty funny... for breakfasts and lunches we went to places with traditional Thai dishes, while for dinners we wound up eating Mexican, Italian, and Indian cuisines (as I write this entry from Kathmandu, I am VERY happy we took this world food tour while we had the chance)!

Our inital plan had been to spend a day or two in Bangkok with Rob before flying out. However, we were all having such a good and relaxing time in Hua Hin that we bagged that idea, and drove up the morning of our flight. After getting stuck in a massive traffic jam, retrieving our big bags from the hotel we stayed at our first night in Thailand, battling countless other traffic jams, and driving 180kph at every chance, we made it to the airport with only minutes to spare. Rob -- you rock!